Awesome Blogger Starter Pack
In the 21st century, there is seldom a person out there who hasn’t given blogging a thought. For starters, something particularly enticing about the idea of having your voice heard by hundreds and thousands of people online. When you add to this the fact that these days there is some serious money to be made this way, this whole prospect becomes even more appealing. Nonetheless, making your first steps as a blogger is something far from simple and here are few tips that might come in handy should you decide to carry on with this plan.
1. Finding the right niche
First things first, in order to ensure you start on the right foot, you need to choose the right niche to blog about. You see, contrary to popular myths there is no such thing as ‘easy internet money’ or getting rich from part-time blogging. Becoming a full-fledged member of the blogosphere is an arduous work and no matter how infatuated you are with the topic of your blog, there will be times when you will seriously consider abandoning it all. Needless to say, these things are much less likely to happen if you manage to find the niche you are personally interested in.
2. Get a reliable internet connection
Internet could be one of the least considered, however, a necessary requirement to run a successful blog. Blogging has a lot of factors, including setting up a website, digital marketing and promotion, social media channels, content creation, and more. To accomplish these tasks, good internet is essential so as to show your creativity without getting interrupted due to slow internet speed or frequent disconnection issues. So, if you have made a decision to start blogging, you can first look for a reliable internet provider to get a connection to DSL (broadband) internet or satellite internet based on your preference. To make a sound choice between the two types, you can do little research on satellite internet vs dsl to learn the benefits of both and analyze which one could work best for you as a blogger. You could look for aspects like connection costs, upload-download speed, maximum bandwidth, latency, etc. before making your decision.
3. The choice of CMS
Another thing you need to set your mind on is choosing the right CMS. At the moment, over 27 percent of all content online is managed in WordPress (WP), which is of little surprise. WP gives one a beginner-friendly learning curve, as well as the ability to fully customize your website without having to write a single line of the code. Aside from this, the plethora of plugins available for this particular CMS is a great help in most aspects of running a blog. In the end, you need to find an adequate WordPress host, but this too shouldn’t be that difficult.
4. Build your online identity
Next thing you should do is try to establish your blog’s online identity. For example, you need to find a voice that will resound strongly amongst your target demographic and constantly use it on your blog. In this way, your content, comments and announcements will become recognizable by your audience, which can later save you from a world of trouble, should someone try to unlawfully use your intellectual property. In case you have to work with contributors and guest bloggers, you might want to establish some simple yet firm guidelines, that will ensure that the quality of your content remains up to your standards.
5. Use social media
Even the best-written content is worth for nothing if no one can find it. This is where social media comes in big time. For example, you want to include a link to your content on social media, so that people who like it have a way to trace it back to your blog. Furthermore, seeing how some of your audience may be from a different time zone, you might want to schedule posts that are intended for their region. Finally, you need to post new content regularly so that you don’t get forgotten by your readers. Keep in mind that you may not have fresh content every day, but you can at least use announcements, teasers or even post a single image to remind everyone you are still there.
Conclusion
Of course, this is far from everything you need to know about running a successful blog. Some honorable mentions are making a FAQ that is a list of separate topics, doing a research of your target demographic and picking a narrower topic within your niche to focus on. Each of these three, however, can easier be categorized as finesse rather than starter skills, which makes them a story for a different time. The most important of all is that your main focus should never be the profitability, but the quality of your blog. Those passionate about what they do are bound to earn more than those who look at their blog as nothing more than another source of revenue.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/285039